By Tracy Briseño

The Ames Public Library Bookmobile has been serving the Ames community for the last 59 years. I cannot speak to the entire history of the Bookmobile personally. However, I thought it would be fun to share my history with the Bookmobile over the last 33 years, since I moved to Ames with my family at the age of 9.

I have loved reading my whole life, and when we moved here from North Carolina I asked my mom to check out the local library and report back. We did visit the library, but a lot of my regular checkouts and conversations were on the Bookmobile with Fred, the Bookmobile driver for my stop at St. Cecilia. My brother and I were regular visitors, walking to the Bookmobile from our house after school. We would read through the books aboard and ask for certain titles to be brought out for us. After a year, I began volunteering at the library. There is disagreement between my mom and Lynne, who was in charge of the Bookmobile at that time, as to whether I enthusiastically talked my way into starting to volunteer early, or waited impatiently to turn 11 and begin volunteering.

After several years of volunteering, I began working at the library shelving youth materials. I loved getting the chance to see behind the scenes at the library and help get things back out to the shelves for other enthusiastic readers to find. As a bonus, during that time I was also able to help out on the Bookmobile. I sat outside every Friday all summer long to help kids sign up for the summer reading program and get their prizes. I rode the bus across town to give breaks to the Bookmobile driver at Old Orchard and help customers there to find what they were looking for. I got to fill in occasionally at Sawyer and Edwards and meet customers there, too.

I learned the immense value of outreach service as I saw folks bringing their new neighbors to introduce them to the library and help them sign up for a library card. I saw the joy of getting the exact book you’ve been waiting for and the connections that developed between community members and their library staff at their mobile branch library.

Since then, I have had the pleasure of stepping into a role at the library where I coordinate Bookmobile outreach and work with a fantastic team to drive out and serve the community wherever they are. I even learned to drive the Bookmobile, and it wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be!

It’s been such a joy to be a part of the Bookmobile’s journey, and I can’t wait to see where it takes us next!